Hunger is our body’s way of letting us know that our body needs more fuel for energy.  We eat food, our body signals that it has received enough fuel by appeasing our appetite, and then our body converts the food into energy.  However, as anyone who drives a diesel car, or chooses premium over regular gas can tell you, not all fuels are the same.

Our appetites are controlled by our protein intake.

If you eat high protein foods, you will not eat very much because as soon as you get sufficient protein your body will tell you that you’re full.  If you eat low protein foods, you will need to eat every hour and a half because your body will digest the low protein, feel hungry again and will still be asking for more protein.  Roger Snow, Owner and Operator of Rocky Mountain Grain Products, laughs, “That’s why a person can eat a dozen doughnuts at a sitting even though there’s a huge amount of calories in that dozen doughnuts, there’s not a lot of protein.  But nobody sits down and eats a dozen eggs because eggs are high in protein.  Or no body eats 2 or 3 steaks because they are so high in protein.”

Our energy flow is determined by how quickly the energy is released from the food we eat.

If you eat carbohydrates, which are digested very rapidly, you’ll get a quick burst of energy and then feel tired again shortly after.  Your body will signal that you need more fuel by making you feel hungry.  Protein and fat take much longer to digest than carbohydrates, and therefore its energy is released over time.  This gives you a more consistent flow of energy and you don’t feel hungry as often.

According to Roger, there are two things that are important about hemp hearts as a breakfast food. “One is that the fats in hemp hearts give you lots of energy because your body doesn’t get all the energy out of those fats in minutes and hours like the way it would out of sugars and carbohydrates.  When you get energy from sugar and carbohydrates, you get the energy too quickly, it leaves you feeling low, and you look for something else to bring your energy levels back up.  Since the energy in hemp is from fats, and fats digest slowly, then you have a fairly even flow of energy so that you are not on an energy roller coaster.  As far as appetite satisfaction, because hemp is high in protein, when you eat significant amounts of hemp for breakfast, you won’t be hungry for a long period of time.  If hemp was lower in protein, you’d be hungry in an hour and a half no matter how much you eat.  Anyone who’s eaten pasta before knows this is true because whether you eat a small bowl of spaghetti or a large bowl of spaghetti, you’re still hungry in an hour and a half.”

Eat hemp hearts for energy all day and hunger delay!